Analytics tools: Don't just stop with Google

When organizations start out with their web analytics plan they start at the basics: Google Analytics. The basics are great, nothing wrong with using Google Analytics as a means to track your customer behavior, and enable yourself to pull deeper insights on buying behaviors of customers. In a previous post I wrote about the differences between Google Analytics and another analytics provider: Adobe Analytics. One takeaway from that post was that organizations need to look at their website, audience, and analytics goals when determining what tools are best for their situation. In this post, we'll look at an ecommerce website that is leveraging a plethora of tools to meet their web analytics needs.

Keyword Hero is the savior your website needs

For organizations both big and small knowing where your website visitors are coming from is critical. Website referral sources are important in understanding the reach of your site, and determine the effectiveness of your marketing channels. In a recent blog, we discussed the importance of referral metrics for your site, and now we'd like to dive in to a specific shortcoming in Google Analytics' reporting and what you can do to resolve the issue.

According to Internet Live Stats, more than 3.4 billion Google searches occur daily. A small handful of those searches are people who end up on your website. Seeing the search terms that users are typing in can provide good perspective on how relevant your site is in online search and provide direction on how to improve your search engine optimization. One problem: most of the data in Google Analytics can't be read due to a Google-enacted security feature. Encrypted searches are causing an overwhelming percentage of organic searches to be classified as (not provided) by Google Analytics. Because of this issue, large amounts of data are being missed and hindering marketers. One company, however, believes that they have found a solution to the (not provided) problem: Keyword Hero.

Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics: What’s right for you?

Imagine this: You’ve just started a new job as a marketer at a national retail company and you’ve been tasked with overhauling the company’s marketing strategy. You note that the organization needs a web analytics tool to track the effectiveness of the new marketing strategy. After all, all good decisions are data-driven. You bring this idea to your boss, and the question is brought up, “which analytics platform should we choose? There seem to be quite a few.” You pause, you hadn’t considered anything other than Google Analytics. Not satisfied with the answer you’ve given; your boss has tasked you to research what analytics tool best fits the organization’s needs. This isn’t an uncommon scenario for all marketers, especially those working to get a company’s analytics off the ground. This post will guide you through the decision-making process by comparing two prominent analytics options: Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics through a series of relevant factors. At the end, it will be up to the marketer to decide what platform fits his or her needs best.